Rotting New Orleans school building may be reborn as civil rights museum

John McCusker / The Times-PicayuneMyrtle Banks Elementary School photographed last week.A school on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard where generations of Central City children were educated may finally succumb to the wrecking ball.

But if the neighborhood loses a prominent landmark, it could gain a new monument to its past as a center of African American life in New Orleans. The state's first civil rights museum may be located on the site, near where black leaders staged a boycott of white-owned businesses in the 1960s.

The fate of the building is not completely sealed, despite last Tuesday's vote in favor of demolition. The School Board plans to hold at least one meeting to solicit community input. And even if the school is torn down, pieces of it may be incorporated into the future Louisiana Civil Rights Museum.

"Even if it's demolished, I'd like to keep the facade," said Lynnette Colin, a member of the museum advisory board and executive director of the O.C. Haley Boulevard Merchants and Business Association. "Whatever components we can save -- doors, architectural artifacts, anything we can save -- we will recycle back into whatever structure is constructed on that property for the civil rights institute."

"It offers tremendous redevelopment potential and is critical to the revitalization of the boulevard and the neighborhood," members of the landmarks society wrote. "This is a sturdy and significant building that could be declared surplus by the school board and sold to independent individuals or groups for any number of civic and private uses."

Michael DeMocker / The Times-Picayune archiveOn September 8, 2008, New Orleans firefighters battle a four-alarm fire at the vacant Myrtle Banks School on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. in Central City.School officials say they would sell Myrtle Banks to the right purchaser. But as long as the School Board owns it, there is little upside to overhauling and maintaining a building already shut down due to declining enrollment.

Post-Katrina, the board has direct control over only four schools, further lessening the need for an empty building. Since the fire a year and a half ago, rain has poured into the building through the unprotected roof, and gaps in the chain-link fence leave it vulnerable to vandalism and squatters.

"It is a blight in the community, and we want to deal with that issue," said Chief Financial Officer Stan Smith. "Our goals and objectives are to dedicate our efforts to the rebuilding of schools and providing services to our students. That's tantamount in our minds to the priorities we set."

Meanwhile, the civil rights museum has been slow getting off the ground. The state Legislature authorized its creation in 1999, and in 2004 the School Board gave the museum permission to use the Myrtle Banks property. Six years later, the project is still in the early planning stages.

Even before the fire, museum planners had intended to incorporate a portion of the school into a modern building rather than saving the whole structure.

"Because of the damage to it, to try to restore it would be more expensive than tearing it down and starting from scratch," said Priscilla Edwards, another museum board member and treasurer of the Central City Partnership. "We could probably use some of the facade, to keep some of the historic culture of it, but I think it should be torn down."

In the school's early years, a commercial strip then known as Dryades Street thrived down the block from where neighborhood children learned reading, writing and arithmetic. According to the O.C. Haley Merchants and Business Association Web site, by the 1950s there were almost 200 shops, many of them run by Jewish merchants who lived in apartments upstairs. At a time when African Americans were not welcome on Canal Street, Dryades was the place to go for a soda, a haircut or a new suit.

It also became the headquarters of the local civil rights movement. The boycott, which targeted white-owned shops that limited black people to menial labor, resulted in the hiring of 30 black clerks and cashiers. But there was a cost: some shopkeepers abandoned the area and moved to the suburbs, marking the beginning of the neighborhood's decline.

Across town on Canal Street, Oretha Castle Haley was one of the activists arrested and charged with criminal mischief for sitting at an all-white lunch counter at McCrory's in September 1960. The case received national attention, and the U.S. Supreme Court held that the activists' convictions were unconstitutional.

Dryades Street was eventually renamed in Haley's honor, with both its name and its history making it a fitting home for a civil rights museum.

As the neighborhood declined, so did the school, which was known as the Davey School and then McDonogh 38 before being christened Myrtle Banks after a longtime Central City educator.

Now, Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard teeters on the brink of a renaissance, with restaurants and stores reclaiming long-vacant buildings. The block between Erato and Thalia streets occupied by Myrtle Banks Elementary could be a cornerstone of the revival, though it will likely be years before the museum is completed.

School officials say they are open to the idea of salvaging parts from the old building to incorporate into the new museum, keeping the physical remnants of the past alive.

"If it became a civil rights museum, and there's something worthwhile that they'd want, that could absolutely become part of the plan," School Board President Woody Koppel said.

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Cindy Chang can be reached at cchang@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3386.